Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight: Use Twitter hashtag #meteorshower to boast of spotting shooting stars

Do something different tonight: Leave the city and the suburbs for a late-night picnic beneath a meteor shower. The Orionids, the second annual meteor shower of the year, is expected to peak Oct. 21 around 3 a.m. PT. The best places in Southern California to view a meteor shower are, as you’d expect, in rural areas. Here’s a photo gallery of some prime viewing locations, such as Red Rock Canyon State Park and Joshua Tree National Park (pictured above and taken during the more well-known Perseid meteor shower that occurs between July and August).

“The best time to watch will be between 1 a.m. and dawn local time Wednesday morning, regardless of your location. That’s when the patch of Earth you are standing on is barreling headlong into space on Earth’s orbital track, and meteors get scooped up like bugs on a windshield,” said Robert Roy Britt on Space.com.

For those of you who want to Twitter your star-gazing experience tonight, use the hashtag #meteorshower. You can also find other reports of people talking about the Orionid meteor shower by searching for “Orionids” on Twitter Search.

If you feel inspired to get in your car and head for the desert, MapQuest calculates the driving distance between Los Angeles and Joshua Tree National Park to be 159 miles and taking 2 hours, 38 minutes. I used their fuel-cost calculator to see how much it would be, and they quoted me $25 each way for a car that gets 20 miles per gallon.

Need viewing tips? The StarDate website offers suggestions on what to pack.

— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel & Deal blogger

[Photo: Joshua Tree National Park. Credit: Reed Saxon / Associated Press]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 4:33 pm by Jen Leo and is filed under California, Last Minute, Los Angeles, National Parks, News, Tips & Advice, Outdoors & Adventure, Sky watching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.